9 Everyday Habits That Are Killing Your Gadgets

It’s hard to imagine today’s world without numerous gadgets. They follow us everywhere, simplify our lives, and allow us to be more connected than ever. However, some of our habits can be harmful to our devices and can have a detrimental effect on their lifespan.

Bright Side found out which everyday actions it’s better to put aside in order to make your gadgets work for you as long as possible.

1. Taking a smartphone to the bathroom or the toilet

First of all, a phone can easily slip out of your hands and into the water. And after an incident like this you won’t be able to rely on it anymore.

Second, it can be dangerous for your life. If a smartphone that is connected to a charger falls into the bath, you are guaranteed to get a fatal electric shock. Don’t just hope that you’ll be lucky — accidents happen even with those who are extremely careful.

Toilet experts are sure that even 5 minutes spent with a telephone in the bathroom can have negative consequences for your health. Toilets and bathrooms are the dirtiest places in your home because a toilet bowl and the handles of the faucet are covered with pathogenic microbes. Moreover, when you flush the toilet, splashes invisible to the eyes get spread everywhere including your phone, which you will inevitably carry to the bedroom or the kitchen. And your gadget ends up turning into a microbe hotbed.

2. Having breakfast in front of your laptop

No matter how accurately you eat, crumbs from your morning sandwich will surely get onto your laptop’s keyboard and get stuck in the gaps between the keys. Even if you think that you have gotten all of the crumbs, it’s not true. Over time, this morning habit will lead to stuck keys that will eventually stop working.

Additionally, it’s not just the food and crumbs that are the foes of the keyboard. Your favorite cup of coffee could also accidentally lead to a catastrophe — a wet keyboard.

3. Leaving the phone to charge overnight

There is nothing to worry about if you change your phone once every couple of years. But if you want your smartphone to serve you longer, this information might be useful for you.

Usually we leave our phones connected to their chargers overnight so that our gadget is 100% charged by the morning. There is nothing dangerous in doing this because, Edo Campos, the representative of a battery-maker Anker, assures there is “No need to worry about overcharging since modern devices will terminate the charge correctly at the appropriate voltage.”

However, the bad news is that our gadgets keep themselves on the 100% level of charging throughout the night trying to compensate for a slight discharge. And this starts to decrease the capacity of the battery over time. Moreover, lithium-ion batteries don’t require a full charge since high voltage wears out the battery.

4. Discharging the phone battery completely

The lithium-ion batteries of some smartphones are programmed for a certain amount of full charging/discharging cycles from 100% to 0%. After several hundred of these cycles, the battery capacity starts to decrease. That’s why it’s better to not wait until the phone discharges completely and to charge it when the level of the battery goes down to approximately 20%.

5. Lifting the laptop by its display

According to laptop technicians, 17% of people seek help with their laptops because of the appearance of black spots on the display. As a rule, those black spots appear in the places where it’s very convenient to hold the laptop by its display. Due to the constant pressure of being picked up this way, its matrix gets damaged, and fixing it is not cheap.

6. Leaving gadgets in the car

It’s not just about safety, but also about the fact that overcooling or overheating are harmful to technology. Heat especially affects the processor negatively. Also, if the humidity level is high, condensation may appear inside the gadget.

If you leave an electronic device in the cold for a long time, it will cause both damage to the battery and to the display. That’s why it’s better to not leave your gadget in the car in the summer or in the winter. If you have no choice, let it warm up or cool down to a normal temperature before starting to use it.

7. Cleaning gadgets using household chemicals

Even household chemicals that say “universal” can contain elements that are dangerous for your gadgets. For example, it’s prohibited to clean laptops, desktops, tablets, and smartphones with the help of detergents for windows and glass. They contain ammonia and other substances that damage the antistatic and anti-reflective coatings that are on screens. Over time, these chemical compounds become the reason for the appearance of cracks, yellowing, and opacities on monitors and displays.

8. Taking the laptop to bed

We hardly ever use a special laptop holder whenever we take the laptop to bed to watch our favorite TV series. Often, we just put the gadget on our laps, which can be very harmful since it’s prohibited to close a laptop’s air vents. It’s necessary to provide them with a direct access to air, otherwise, your gadget can overheat and stop operating.

9. Using any charger that fits

How many times have you plugged in your device using your friend’s charger in order to quickly get it back to life? Just because a charger fits, doesn’t mean it’s compatible with your phone. It actually can be a harmful and dangerous procedure. This is because there is a special chip inside our phone that is responsible for several functions that can be damaged by the wrong cable. This can result in preventing your phone from performing some functions properly.

Have you ever made any of these mistakes? Please tell us about it in the comments!